Show a Triumph for Dedicated, Special Cast : Theater: Disabled actors in La Costa turn in spirited performances that overcome their physical handicaps.

There is a ramp on the stage for performers in wheelchairs in the “The Curious Savage.” There are prompters to help hearing-impaired actors. There are rooms backstage for arthritic performers to rest between scenes.

At Performing Arts Theatre for the Handicapped (PATH) in La Costa, where “The Curious Savage” opened Friday, people understand the needs of disabled actors. Their job is to encourage casting directors, audiences and the performers themselves to see beyond the limitations of disabilities. The show, which runs through Feb. 18, will be more than a revival of the John Patrick play about a wealthy widow hiding her money from three greedy stepchildren.

It will be a demonstration that, when the handicapped are given an equal chance, they can hold their own with the able-bodied actors sharing the stage through Feb. 18.

“This is not a social club,” said PATH founder Bob Cole in his La Costa office. “We don’t want people to hire them because they’re handicapped, but because they’re talented. We’re not here to offer them pity, and we don’t coddle them. We treat them like human beings.”

That’s an attitude that people like Jack Robertson, who plays Hannibal, appreciates.

“No one asked me anything about my disability,” said Robertson, who has been confined to a wheelchair since an auto accident in 1969, when he was 19. “The total emphasis is just on acting skills.”

For the last 21 years, Robertson has been living proof that disabilities need not limit the man.

The accident broker his back, but not his spirit.

He returned to college, earned a bachelor’s degree in education from Kent State University, coached eighth-grade basketball, and became a marathon swimmer, circumnavigating the 28 1/2-mile island of Manhattan as well as making a 12-mile swim at Coronado.

He came within a quarter-mile of finishing a crossing of the chilly English Channel before the tides turned against him. His wife gave birth to their son only months ago. If he now wants to be an actor, no one at PATH sees his handicap. Instead, one of the able-bodied actors, Joel Hepner, noted, admiringly, that Robertson learned his lines before anyone else.

“In the beginning, there was a tendency to see him as heroic,” said Dave Clark, an able-bodied fellow-swimmer who also performs in the show. “There was a tendency to idealize him. Now I don’t even see the wheelchair. Jack’s Jack. He’s just another person. He is very optimistic and very determined, and he will always find a way to do what he wants to do. It’s been wonderful getting to know him.”

Because “The Curious Savage” has been in rehearsal for six months, the cast has had a lot of time to get familiar with each other. In one scene, Mary Nelson, an able-bodied former nurse who plays the lead, Mrs. Savage, tosses Gloria Hewitt (Mrs. Paddy) a teddy bear to hold, without drawing any attention to the way Hewitt’s fingers are curled as a result of rheumatoid arthritis.

Hewitt wraps her arms around the stuffed animal all the more tenderly because of the effort involved.

Hewitt, who has described herself as totally disabled since 1970, has two artificial knees and gets laughs from the ensemble when she calls herself “the plastic wonder--I’m not biodegradable now.”

She will turn 60 during the run of “The Curious Savage” and, despite having no more than what she calls “a thimbleful of energy,” she hasn’t regretted the long hours required by her new dedication to acting.

“I’ve always been a ham,” she said with an impish grin. “I decided it’s time to come out of the closet. I decided it was time to start life again.”

Katrina Crater, who plays Florence, has been hearing-impaired since the age of 5 because her mother had rubella during her pregnancy.

“It was frustrating growing up in a hearing world where people don’t understand how I feel,” said Crater, who will turn 25 during the run. “You know how kids tease you. But it’s nice to be here where everyone understands.”

Cole, who founded the organization in Los Angeles in 1980, has understood about the special needs of disabled people like Crater for a long time. Cole has two daughters who are profoundly deaf, and he has hearing aids in both ears.

Cole also learned about the special needs of actors when he discovered in the late ‘40s that out-of-work performers would make wonderful workers in the temporary agency he owned in New York. He hired Dustin Hoffman, Jason Robards, Joan Rivers, Barbra Streisand, Robert Vaughn, Robert Duvall and Tom Bosley to do secretarial work. He treated his actors well, giving them time off for auditions, and providing them with free spaces to put on plays. On one occasion, he rented a theater for the then-unknown Robert Duvall and Dustin Hoffman to co-star in “A View From the Bridge.”

When Cole founded PATH 40 years later, Bosley returned the favor of donated space. He gave PATH free room in Paramount Studios, where he was filming “Happy Days,” and got cast members Henry Winkler and Ron Howard to join PATH’s advisory board of directors.

Cole is proud of these names, but he acknowledges that having them there on the masthead gives people a false impression of his organization’s financial well-being. PATH has had a hand-to-mouth operation ever since it moved to San Diego after Cole’s heart attack in 1984, during its last production of “The Curious Savage” (a production Cole never got to see).

Many of his Los Angeles friends have lost touch with him now that he’s here and PATH’s current space is donated by Wells Fargo Bank on a month-to-month basis. A for-sale sign marks the property.

The company depends on donations and volunteers to build the set, buy the lights and find and install seats. The costume designer, Carol Lacira, is hailed as a miracle worker by the cast because she designed three costumes for under $10. When there was leftover lumber from the stage to be carted out of the theater, everyone pitched in, including Robertson, who laid the lumber on his knees and wheeled it out, coming back over and over again for more.

Cole and his performers speak in awe-struck tones about the likes of former San Diego news anchor and current PATH board member Bree Walker, born with a severe malformation of the bones and joints of the hands and feet called ectrodactylism. Do they have another star in their midst? That wouldn’t surprise Cole, who overflows with pride and confidence in his actors. Cole spends $12,000 a year--most of the funds he raises--on printing an annual casting directory of performers with disabilities. Disabilities are listed right below the pictures along with weight, hair and eye color, and height. And the list of television, radio and theater credits is sometimes quite long.

James Troesh, a PATH graduate and quadriplegic in a wheelchair, is one of the success stories. His first play was “The Caine Mutiny,” and he has since graduated to writing and performing in “Highway to Heaven.” Alumna Barbara C. Adside, born without legs, has appeared on several television shows, including “Night Court” and “Cagney and Lacey.” Cole has also talked with deaf actor Howie Seago about the possibility of teaching a class for PATH. Seago, has appeared in “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” “Hunter” and “The Equalizer,” and earned acclaim for his work in “Ajax” and “The Tempest” at the La Jolla Playhouse. And the list goes on.

Still, it isn’t the possibility of discovering a star that keeps people like Al Villetta, the artistic director of the program who was once the single paid staff member, donating his time along with the rest of the volunteer crew.

“This business is filled with egos and self centered feelings,” said Villetta. “It’s nice to know you’re doing something to help humanity in some way.”

And it isn’t the lure of stardom alone that keeps the blind, the deaf, the paralyzed and the chronically ill finding a way, day after day, often after their regular jobs, to make the rehearsals and the performances in La Costa.

“It’s a great group of people, a good camaraderie, and it’s challenging,” said Robertson.

Call PATH at (619) 438-3498 or (619) 753-3386 for performance schedules.